THE NEWSLETTER OF THE SHERLOCK HOLMES SOCIETY OF LONDON Roger Johnson, Mole End, 41 Sandford Road, Chelmsford CM2 6DE e-mail: [email protected] no. 335 24 August 2013 The subscription for postal subscribers who send money rather than The Victorian Detective by Alan Moss and Keith Skinner (Shire stamped & self-addressed envelopes is (for 12 issues) £6.60 in the UK, Publications, www.shirebooks.co.uk ; £6.99) is a first-rate introduction and £11.00 or US$18.00 overseas. Please make dollar checks payable to the British police detective, from Fielding’s Bow Street Runners to to The Sherlock Holmes Society of London . An e-mail subscription the age of scientific investigation. Alan Moss is a retired senior police costs nothing and pretty much guarantees instantaneous delivery. officer. Keith Skinner is co-author of The Official Encyclopaedia of Perhaps the most important new publications in our field are the third Scotland Yard , an authority on the Whitechapel murders, and a edition of The Bibliography of A Conan Doyle by Richard Lancelyn consultant to the Metropolitan Police Crime Museum – the so-called Green & John Michael Gibson , with updates by Phillip George Black Museum. The 56-page paperback is splendidly illustrated, Bergem and including pdf files of book covers & title pages and remarkably comprehensive, and written with great authority. Conan magazine covers & illustrations – these extras being works in progress Doyle’s depiction of the police often slides into caricature. The (Cdn$50.00); and The e-Index to The Strand Magazine by Geraldine W Victorian Detective is the reality. Beare (no price given). Both are published in electronic form on disc by The Criminological Holmes by Kelvin Jones (Cunning Crimes Books, The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box (PO Box 50, RR #4, Eugenia, http://cunningcrimes.blogspot.co.uk ; Kindle £4.39) contains an A to Z Ontario, Canada N0C 1E0; www.batteredbox.com ; guide to the criminological content of the canon, as well as a list of [email protected] ). I can’t give you a proper assessment right now Holmes’s own monographs and a rare reprint of Upon The Tracing of because the formatting seems to be too advanced for my computer. That Footsteps . obstacle should be overcome shortly. I can vouch for the excellence of The House of Silk was the first new Sherlock Holmes novel officially the Green-Gibson Bibliography as the second edition is on my shelf, and approved by the Conan Doyle Estate Ltd. Others have followed, to be able to consult it via the computer, with the various extras, will be including Sherlock Holmes & the Master Engraver by Ross Husband a real blessing. Geraldine Beare’s Strand index is long out of print in (GlenRoss Editions, Norfolk IP21 4YG; £11.95; Kindle £3.99) – first in hard copy, so it’ll be a delight to have it in any format. a series of six called The Revival of Sherlock Holmes . In 1889 the plates John Gibson has also contributed to another new book from the same for the next run of Bank of England £10.00 notes are stolen, along with publisher, The Budds of the West Country , a well-illustrated 112-page the special water-marked paper. The quest to retrieve them before the paperback by Brian W Pugh , (no price given). Brian Pugh, Curator of country’s economy is ruined takes Holmes and Watson into the foulest, the Conan Doyle (Crowborough) Establishment, author of the most dangerous corners of London. The mind behind the crime is invaluable Chronology of the Life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle , gives us a shielded by brutality and murder – and by his own extraordinary genealogical survey of that remarkable family from the Revd Richard intelligence. It’s a clever, fast-moving, atmospheric story, very Budd of St Columb Minor to the death of his great-great grandson (if I acceptably written, except for a persistent omission of the comma in the read the family tree correctly) Dr George Turnavine Budd of Plymouth. vocative (‘Now work swiftly if you please Watson’; ‘I would not wish It was, of course, George Budd whose treatment of his younger to presume Mr Holmes’…). colleague Arthur Conan Doyle influenced the latter’s life and career in Sherlock Holmes: The Stuff of Nightmares by James Lovegrove (Titan such unexpected ways. Fourteen pages are devoted to his life and Books; www.titanbooks.com ; 30 August; £7.99) tells a more outré tale, twenty-four more to a selection of his letters and essays from medical as you might expect from a prolific and very popular science-fiction journals, rebutting the myth that he was no more than a quack. He was writer. The action begins with an explosion at Waterloo Station, and brilliant, charismatic, eccentric and devious, qualities that, thanks to the builds from there. The bomber’s ultimate victim is to be Queen Victoria, researches of Messrs Pugh and Gibson, we can see developing through but is he, as the police believe, the masked man who appears at each the generations of Budds. catastrophic scene? Or does that mysterious person (a sort of amalgam For ‘Sherlock Holmes Through Time and Place’, the recent conference of Spring-heeled Jack and Batman, and calls himself Baron Cauchemar) at the University of Minnesota, the Norwegian Explorers published J have another and higher purpose, as Holmes suspects? James Randolph Cox: A Sherlockian Festschrift edited by Phillip Bergem Lovegrove’s steampunk thriller treats Holmes, Watson and their circle (US10.00). This attractive 144-page paperback includes, as is only right, with intelligence and respect, and fulfils the promise of his short story tributes to a senior and greatly admired member of the Explorers, from ‘The Fallen Financier’ in The Encounters of Sherlock Holmes . Andrew Malec, Jon Lellenberg and Allen J Hubin among others, but by Black Coat Press titles available as e-books (kindle, nook, etc, etc) now far the greater part of the book features a selection of Randy Cox’s own include: The Daughter of Fantômas , Fantômas in America , Arsène invigorating Holmesian essays, from the many published in The Baker Lupin vs Sherlock Holmes: The Blonde Phantom , Arsène Lupin vs Street Journal , Baker Street Miscellanea and elsewhere. The book isn’t Sherlock Holmes: The Hollow Needle , Arsène Lupin vs Sherlock yet listed on the website at www.norwegianexplorers.org , but check Holmes: The Stage Play , Rocambole (two plays), Gentlemen Of The with John Bergquist at [email protected] (3556 Ashbury Road, Night / Captain Phantom (two plays), and Sherlock Holmes In Paris by Eagan, MN 55122, USA). Seamas Duffy . Among the many treasures in the Sherlock Holmes Collections at the Carl Heifetz , a pillar of the Pleasant Places of Florida, reports the University of Minnesota (see www.lib.umn.edu/scrbm/holmes ) a good publication of his first novel, The Voyage of the Blue Carbuncle number were bequeathed by the late John Bennett Shaw, whose (Outskirts Press, www.outskirtspress.com ; $8.95). ‘Based on the work centenary falls on 10 October this year. In celebration of John’s of Arthur Conan Doyle and Gene Roddenberry, Voyage of the Blue enthusiasm, wisdom and friendship, Sherlock in LA Press (1741 Via Carbuncle is a fun and exciting spoof, sure to please science fiction fans Allena, Oceanside, CA 92056, USA; [email protected] ) has as well as those who love the stories of Sherlock Holmes and Star Trek .’ published a delightful little booklet, The Sage of Santa Fe: Adventures The launch party for The Papers of Sherlock Holmes: Volume Two by and Public Life of John Bennett Shaw by Susan Rice and Vinnie David Marcum (MX Publications, http://www.mxpublishing.co.uk ; Brosnan , with photographs, drawings, quotations and reminiscences £9.99) will be at the Park Plaza Sherlock Holmes Hotel in Baker Street ($7.00 postpaid to US, $9.00 postpaid to UK). at 7.00pm on 26 September. Free tickets are available from http://papersofsherlockholmes-efbevent.eventbrite.co.uk/ . Ross Foad, Luke Kuhns and Tony Reynolds will also be signing copies of their Sep: TheatreSevern, Shrewsbury (01743 281281; books David Marcum’s next book, Sherlock Holmes and a Quantity of www.theatresevern.co.uk/ ). 18 Sep: Connaught Theatre, Worthing Debt , will be published on 6 November. (01903 206206; www.worthingtheatres.co.uk ). 20 Sep: St George’s, From MX on 8 October comes Sherlock Holmes and The Lufton Lady , a Great Yarmouth (01493 331484; www.stgeorgestheatre.com ). 15 Oct: short novel by the much-missed by Marlene R Aig , edited by Chris Perth Theatre (01738 621031; www.horsecross.co.uk/perth-theatre ). 25- Redmond (£6.99), and on 30 October comes Watson Is Not an Idiot: An 26 Oct: Key, Peterborough (01733 207239; www.vivacity- Opinionated Tour of the Sherlock Holmes Canon by Eddy Webb peterborough.com/venues/key-theatre ). 13 Nov: 40 Winks Hotel, (£9.99). London. 28-30 Nov: Mill Studio, Guildford (01483 440000; www.yvonne-arnaud.co.uk ). Investigating Sherlock Holmes: The Jewish Connection and Other Inquiries by Hartley R Nathan & Clifford S Goldfarb is due on 31 Sherlock Holmes 10 Minute Plays by John DeGaetano , will be at the October from Mosaic Press ( www.mosaic-press.com ; £16.09). Leicester Square Theatre, London 2-5 October (08448 733433; www.leicestersquaretheatre.com ), then at Islington’s Kings Head Due on 11 November, The Illustrated Sherlock Holmes: Two Theatre (0207 478 0160; www.kingsheadtheatre.com ) 8-12 October. Unabridged Mysteries from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is a ‘Literary Pop Up’ book illustrated by Chris Coady , whose artwork so impressed in Sherlock Holmes: The Speckled Band , Treasurer’s House, York, The Lost Stories of Sherlock Holmes by Tony Reynolds (Canterbury November 14 to 24 Classics; £12.84).